Top Reasons You May Deserve a Scholarship

College can be rough to begin with — big blocks of classes and long hours of homework and studying, not to mention trying to fit a social life in. However, for some, college can be even rougher simply because of its price tag. Many students are fortunate or privileged enough not to have to worry about the expense of college.

However, there are also many students for whom that same price tag can make or break their college experience. Scholarships can make the difference for some students on whether they can go to the school of their dreams (or even if they can go to college at all). There are a lot of scholarships out there and they can all be hard to navigate. You want to find scholarships that fit you the best so that you have a better chance of winning.

There are many reasons why you may deserve a scholarship, so read on to discover some of them!

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Organization membership

The first thing to check through is if you belong to any organizations, and from there, checking to see if any of these organizations offer any scholarships. Honor Societies are good places to start from National Honor Society to Phi Eta Sigma to the National Society for Collegiate Scholars.

Whatever honor society you belong to, there is a pretty good chance that they offer scholarships to active members (emphasis on active; society membership often cannot be for show, and you need to follow their guidelines and rules to be considered an active member of the society). You might have to write an essay or something similar, but the pool is limited only to members of those organizations which can help your odds of winning.

Outside of honor societies, you can check out other organizations you may be a part of from fraternities and sororities and more. If you belong to organizations outside of your school like Rotary Club, there are more options for scholarships there.

Nationality or Religion

Everyone comes from somewhere, right? There are many organizations that exist where people of the same nationality or religion can band together and form their own communities. From churches to synagogues to mosques, most of these kinds of institutions offer scholarships of some sort or are connected to smaller organizations like Jewish Federations, as an example, that also offer college scholarships.

If you know where your family comes from, you can apply to scholarships from organizations that are centered around nationality too. Even if you are not a member of the group or have a relative, sometimes you can still apply. It can go back generations too, so if you had even one grandparent that was Polish, for example, then a Polish ancestry group might be interested in providing you with a scholarship. Check out your local communities before expanding your search to include more national chapters or organizations.

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Oddities or Rareties

Are you left handed? Do you suffer from asthma? Are you a red head? If you can answer yes to any of these questions, then there is a scholarship out there for you! Of course scholarships for having odd or rare traits are not limited to those three traits, but they are good examples of what scholarships exist.

There are scholarships for being really tall or really short, having braces, and more. There are things you would not even think about or consider that you manifest that might qualify you for some kind of scholarship, big or small. And something is better than nothing, right?

Hobbies

Do you have any unique hobbies that could earn you a scholarship? There are knitting and crocheting scholarships, scholarships for botany and horticulture, for cooking, for fishing, and even for playing an instrument! You name the hobby and you can probably find some kind of scholarship out there in the world for it that you might qualify for.

There are even scholarships for those whose biggest hobby is reading — ever read anything by Ayn Rand? There is a scholarship for that. Read anything by Tim O’Brien? There is a scholarship for that! No matter what your biggest hobby or your strongest passion is, you can bet that somewhere a scholarship for it exists if only you look hard enough. There are millions of scholarships out there in the world, floating about, just waiting for you to apply for it in order to make all of your college dreams come true.

Let your passions be a part of the solution and help pave your way to success. You have devoted a lot of time to these hobbies and now it is time for them to help pay you back. Get more than fulfillment out of your hobby — get cold, hard cash.

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Danielle Wirsansky graduated from FSU with a BA in Theatre and a BA in Creative Writing with a minor in History. She is a second year graduate student in FSU's History department where she serves as the Communications Officer for the History Graduate Student Association and President of White Mouse Theatre Productions.
She studied abroad in London, England for the Spring 2015 semester at FSU's study center for the Playwriting Program and interned for the English National Theatre of Israel in Summer of 2015. Her first musical, City of Light, opened as part of FSU's New Horizons Festival in Spring of 2016.
She has also won the MRCE and URCAA Research grants from FSU. In the past, she served as the Marketing Director for the FSU Student Theatre Association, the intern for the Holocaust Education Resource Council, and the research assistant of Prof. Nathan Stoltzfus.
She has previously written for Context Florida (Contributing Writer), USA Today College (Contributing Writer), Sheroes of History (Contributing Blogger), No(le)Reservations (Contributing Blogger), Female, Reloaded (Arts/Entertainment Editor) , I Want a Buzz Magazine (intern), Mandarin Newsline (youth arts update columnist), Distink Designs (Guest blogger), whatscheaper.com (associate editor), escapewizard.com (associate editor), Spark TLH (Contributor), the Tallahassee Democrat (contributor), Elan Literary Magazine (Head of Marketing), and the Improviser Newspaper (Opinions Editor).